Borge Boeskov, 1935-2004: 'He was best salesman Boeing ever had'

By JAMES WALLACE, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER AEROSPACE REPORTER

Updated 10:00 pm, Thursday, June 10, 2004

Borge Boeskov was one of Iceland's favorite sons.

And like the Viking explorers who were his ancestors, he loved to tell stories about a life filled with adventures, especially his 37 years with The Boeing Co., where he was one of its colorful personalities, as well as one of its true visionaries.

He was once honored by his native Iceland's president.

He fished in Alaska and Iceland with legends of the industry, from former Boeing Chairman T. Wilson to British Airways Chairman Sir John King.

And he learned from industry giants such as General Electric boss Jack Welch and Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher.

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Condit said he had just had dinner with his good friend, GE's Welch. (Editor's Note: Welch's name was misspelled in the original version of this article.) Over dinner, Welch had complained that he was using Boeing's new 737-600 as a business jet, but it did not have enough range.

"Can we do better?" Condit asked Boeskov.

A week later, Boeskov came back to Condit with the answer. Boeing could take the 737-700 body and add the bigger wing of the 737-800 to give the plane far more range.

When Condit explained the idea to Welch, the GE boss said the two companies should be partners on the project.

Thus was born the Boeing Business Jet.

"If this takes off," Boeskov told Condit, "I want to be in charge of it. I want it as my retirement project."

The first BBJ was sold in 1997. Today, Boeing has won 88 orders, with all but eight planes delivered.

"Going to work for Boeing was the best thing that ever happened to me," Boeskov said in an interview in April 2002 as he headed off into retirement and occasional lectures at the University of Washington.

"Borge was the kind of guy who was the eternal optimist," said Joe Clark, chief executive of Seattle-based Aviation Partners, which developed blended-winglet technology.

"He was the Ronald Reagan of our industry," said Clark, co-founder of Horizon Airlines, which was later sold to Alaska Airlines. "Everybody liked Borge. He was the best salesman that Boeing ever had."

Born in Iceland, Boeskov and his family left for Denmark when he was young, and he graduated from high school there. His mother lives in Denmark and Boeskov returned home to visit her not long before his death.

In 1965, the year he received his degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Minnesota, Boeskov went to work for Boeing in flight operations. One of his two sons works there today. He also has a daughter.

Early on at Boeing, the soft-spoken Boeskov put his considerable persuasive skills to work selling the company's 737 jetliner. He was marketing manager for the plane from 1974 through 1978 and was responsible for the United and Southwest accounts, among others.

It was during this time that Peter Smutny met Boeskov. Smutny was one of Boeing's 737 salesmen. The two men became best friends.

"We traveled a lot together (selling 737s), but Borge had so much knowledge that I really did not have to do much selling," Smutny recalled.

"He just had so much charm."

Boeskov left Boeing briefly in 1983 to be vice president of sales and marking for Mitsubishi Aircraft in Texas. The company was introducing its newest jet into the U.S. market.

He returned to Boeing in 1985 and became director of southern European sales and later vice president of international sales.

In 1994, Boeskov was named to a new position within Boeing -- vice president of product strategy for commercial airplanes.

That's when he showed up one day in Clark's Seattle office at Aviation Partners, and Clark first showed Boeskov the new blended winglets that the company's engineers had developed. The blended winglets curve up gently at the end of an airplane wing, helping improve performance.

Boeskov sometimes proudly wore a badge with the letters NIH, for Not Invented Here. He embraced the concept that good ideas could also come from outside Boeing.

This would be put to the test with Clark's blended winglets.

It was at the Paris Air Show in 1997 that Boeskov approached Clark about putting his small company's very big winglets on the new Boeing Business Jet. Boeskov told Clark that Boeing's engineers didn't believe the 8-foot-high winglets would improve performance of the 737 by the 4 to 5 percent claimed by Aviation Partners.

Clark told Boeskov his company would foot the bill to design winglets for the Boeing Business Jet if Boeskov would test fly them on the plane.

Unable to get Boeing engineers to go along, Boeskov turned to an old friend, the German carrier Hapag-Lloyd, a longtime Boeing 737 customer. Hapag-Lloyd supplied one of its new 737s. Borge and his team installed the winglets. The results were better than Clark had predicted -- a nearly 7 percent reduction in drag.

Boeing would eventually become a true believer too, so much so that it formed a joint business venture with Aviation Partners to market and sell the winglets.

Today, those blended winglets are on every BBJ as well as on several hundred Boeing 737s operating around the world. They are now a factory option when a customer orders a 737, depending on the model.

Last year, at another Paris Air Show, the world's biggest 737 operator, Southwest, announced it wanted blended winglets on its 737 jets.

Several months later, in November, Boeing delivered the first 737 with winglets to Southwest in a ceremony at Boeing Field.

Boeskov couldn't attend that delivery; he was ill. But during the short delivery flight from Everett, an executive with Aviation Partners Boeing spoke to Boeskov by cell phone, giving him a play-by-play of the event.

"Borge had the most subtle but persuasive way about him," Clark said. "He spoke softly but he had the ability to make you a believer."